Growth protocols and characterization of epitaxial graphene on SiC elaborated in a graphite enclosure

Abstract

The epitaxial growth of graphene by the sublimation of Si-terminated silicon carbide (SiC) is studied inside a graphite enclosure in a radio-frequency furnace by comparing different in situ processes involving hydrogen etching or not and different growth conditions. For the growth under vacuum, even with the surface preparation of hydrogen etching, the morphology of the synthesized graphene is found full of voids and defects in the form of a multilayer graphene film. For the growth under Ar, the hydrogen etching plays a vital role to improve the graphene quality in terms of surface roughness, the number of graphene layers and the domain size. For the graphene samples grown with the proposed protocol, the original combination of micro-probe Raman spectroscopy and simultaneous optical transmission and reflection measurements reveals a detailed spatially resolved image of the graphene domains with monolayer domain size of ~5×5µm2 on about 2/3 of the total sample surface. The magnetotransport data yield charge-carrier mobilities up to 2900cm2/Vs as found for high quality graphene on the Si-face of SiC. The observed magnetoquantum oscillations in the magnetoresistance confirm the expected behavior of single-layer graphene.